Fox always was one of the scene's superior singers and his voice is as confident and ebullient as it ever was . . .
Colin Irwin - Folk Roots

Bob, in my view, is a greatly under-rated singer and musician, if he were pushier he'd be up there with the Carthys and Gaughans and he could certainly teach the upcoming generation a thing or three!
Raymon Greenoaken - Stirrings

2006

Bob Fox's supreme voice is full of life and clarity . . .
New Zealand Folk Newsletter

Bob is a local lad and blessed with one of the best voices you will ever hear. He is also a very talented musician playing guitar, piano and dulcimer. Add to that a full and varied repertoire of traditional and modern songs and plenty of good 'crack' and you can be sure of a good night.
Terry Freeman - Davylamp Folk Club


. . . and from Bob Fox, surely one of the great voices of the whole of the Folk Revival, several definitive performances of some great songs.
John Muirhead - Living Tradition

Velvet voice, lovely guitar work, wonderful songs, dont miss him 'down South'
Dartford Folk Club

  . . . a highly respected, time served popular  performer.
Ray Fisher


1999 . . . one of the truly great voices from the North East with musicianship second to none.
Vin Garbutt
 

. . . as soon as I heard Bob Fox sing I realised he must have
one of the best voices in England, I have always regarded him 
as an artist of great ability and integrity.
Ralph McTell



Opening act Bob Fox has, in my humble opinion, one of the finest voices to grace the folk circuit, he was just the right support for the main act. Including some of the 'hits' from his days with Stu Luckley such as Salley Wheatley surely gained him a new legion of fans - a sure sign when everyone around me was joining in with the chorus, and to top it all, Bob is no mean guitarist, truly inspirational infact!!
As is customary on these occasions he was joined for his final number The Bonny Gateshead Lass by the massed ranks of Fairport segueing nicely into their own set.
Pete Fyfe

This year the amiable and accomplished Bob Fox provided the support. Bob accompanied himself on acoustic guitar for a half hour set of richly sung North East Ballads. His performance was marked by warmth, humour and exhortations to sing along with the choruses. Some audiences sang, some didn't but none escaped the plugs for Bob's CD and all appreciated his nimble finger picking guitar work.
Fairport joined Bob each night for his last number The Bonny Gateshead Lass before launching into the first half of their two and a half hour show, and every evening they invited bob to join them for their encore, the moving anthem to absent friends Meet on the Ledge.


Much of the extraordinary success of the Cambridge Folk Festival over the past 39 years is based on its attachment to the most liberal outlook on what can be passed off as folk music but the variety appeals hugely to thousands

of festival-goers, who sit poised each May to fire off their ticket applications before the Sold Out notices go up.

Few will easily forget the energy and excitement of two of this year's triumphs:

Eliza Carthy juggling fiddle and vocals to glorious effect, and Quebec's La Bottine Souriante racing through a muscular, brassy set that owed no less to jazz, rock and salsa than to the dance tunes of the Old World settlers. The Canadians also caused the liveliest  debate of the weekend, sharply dividing onlookers on whether Sandy Silva's percussive dance gyrations presented a new, even more electrifying element

or a slightly tacky distraction.  The route to approval, I felt, involved looking beyond the frequent costume changes and flailing limbs to see what she was doing with her feet.

In their disparate ways, Silva and Carthy helped to illustrate the growing female dominance of these events.

Women have always seemed to have the edge as singers, if only because men were allowed to get away with mediocre-to-rotten voices provided they were brilliant musicians or raconteurs.
But folk is now awash with accomplished female fiddlers, squeezebox players and rounded entertainers. Throughout the festival site women were making the running.
The Waifs, sassy Australians fronted by the Simpson sisters

 Vikki and Donna, were instant crowd-pleasers, while Danu capped a rousing traditional Irish romp with

Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh's searing delivery of Richard Thompson's Farewell,Farewell. 
Even the instrumental mastery of John McCusker and Phil Cunningham was briefly overshadowed when Kate Rusby, once a TV soap extra, was handed a walk-on part and stunned a tentful of people with a solitary ballad, The Bold Privateer. From the bittersweet tale of two comebacks came Cambridge's other talking point. 

Rosanne Cash celebrated a strong recovery from the temporary loss of her voice after childbirth, while poor

Linda Thompson was forced to withdraw altogether by a recurrence of a different medical condition that previously

silenced her for almost 20 years.

 

And to which thrusting young upstart did we turn for some male response to this female ascendancy?


To the bulky form of Bob Fox, a grizzled

north-easterner with a wonderful, rich voice and

the stamina not only to work his socks off with

The Hush, solo and at a harmony workshop,

but to spend most of his off-stage moments drooling

over his new grand-daughterEllie Rose Fox.

 

 

 

 

.

Two of the 2006 Radio Ballads win
prestigious SONY MUSIC AWARDS.

"The Song of Steel" and "Thirty Years of Conflict"

won Gold and Bronze awards at the Sony Radio

Academy Awards 2007.


Bob was involved in the project singing many

songs on five of the new ballads

Bob performs at

Celtic Connections 2007

I was delighted to be asked to sing and play in a live performance of the New Radio Ballads at Glasgow's

Celtic Connections Festival on Monday 22nd January 2007.

In Glasgow, selected highlights from the shows were performed on stage by the musicians and singers

involved in the original recordings.

The instrumentalists

included myself(guitar), 
John McCusker(fiddle,whistle,cittern), 
Andy Cutting(accordion),
Andy Seward(double bass), 
Barry Coope(piano,percussion),
Jez Lowe(guitar,bazouki,mandolin) 
and John Tams (harmonica). 


The singers were

Kate Rusby,

Karine Polwart, John Tams,

Barry Coope,Jez Lowe,Chris While,

Julie Mathews and me!

 

Getting so many artists together for the show was an achievement in itself.  Musical director John Tams and producer John Leonard oversaw development of the musical and vocal arrangements during an intensive two days of rehearsal before the performance. Last year's broadcast sessions for The Radio Ballads were recorded over a number of months with most of the musicians and singers contributing without the others present. 

This made the job of turning the material into a cohesive live show even more daunting but everyone involved made a massive effort and on the night it was a lot more than alright!

The show was staged in the Royal Glasgow Concert Hall and the first set was a selection of songs from five of the Radio Ballads: Song of Steel,The Enemy Within,The Horn of the Hunter,Swings and Roundabouts

and Thirty Years of Conflict. 

After the interval The Ballad of the Big Ships, concerning shipbuilding on the Tyne and the Clyde, was performed

in it's entirety and included many of the interviews with ship-builders recorded for the broadcasts expertly interleaved with the songs by Max Leonard. 
Another feature of the show was a ' big screen' projection of shipbuilding pictures collected and collated

by Bryan Ledgard. 
Former shipyard worker Brian Whittingham also appeared on stage to read his own poems.

The Royal Concert Hall audience gave The Radio Ballads show a standing ovation.

It was a true folk spectacular and one I dearly hope will be repeated.

 

  

 
 

 
 
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